Managing Change and Innovation

Digitalization, global competition and an increased velocity of life and business do not allow companies today to sit back for a while and harvest the fruit of their leading market position. Continuous or sometimes even revolutionary change and innovation are needed to stay in the game. This paper addresses the topic of managing innovation using evidence from the academic literature and occasional evidence from field research with a sample of companies from different sectors, with different sizes and locations. In particular, the study focuses on the backbone of all change and innovation processes: the organizational structure and working culture. What changes are necessary in an organization to enhance the innovation potential and allow a company to navigate through the quickly evolving market environment? What are key aspects regarding the working culture that seem to be a crucial for successful transformation and innovation processes? The key insights are: 1) Organizational structures evolve from silos to client/business line centric units, combined with communities; 2) organizational culture is one of the largest endogenous drivers of innovation management; 3) internal incubators and external innovation hubs jointly contribute to the innovation process; 4) employees become intrapreneurs; 5) a key aspect of the cultural and organizational transformation is leadership involvement and role modeling, and 6) approaches such as design thinking, lean startup, and the striving for a maximization of organizational agility disrupt the traditional work environment.